This week we see that Big Brother Canada has improved its social-media results in the week-over-week period (according to Seevibes) due in part to having tossed the house guests, and viewers, a programming curve ball. As a result, it again notched the highest score for this type of Canadian-made social-TV execution.

Whereas the big elimination night had been Thursday throughout the series, and therefore also the biggest night for online chatter, during the week of Mar. 31 the producers moved the elimination to Sunday. The strategy, what producer Trevor Boris explained on Twitter was a tool employed throughout the Big Brother empire (its used in 46 countries, all except in the U.S.), was touted as a “power shift.”

Coupled with a few other plot twists, the new elimination night left guests scrambling to re-formulate their game plans, on-screen drama that translated into boosted audience social commenting by 30% on both Twitter and Facebook.

Meanwhile CBC’s family-oriented drama Heartland returned to the top three, mainly due to a burst of interest surrounding the announcement that the program is getting a season seven, starting next fall. It yielded more than 7,000 comments, albeit mostly on Facebook (98%, says Seevibes), which Seevibes sees as being of lesser value than Twitter comments, which are more visible online.

It was due to that near Facebook monopoly that Heartland got a lower Seevibes score than Degrassi, even though it had more total interactions.

Degrassi’s social TV audience was in flux during the period. While its overall interactions dipped 2% in the period, the Twitter chatter rose 25% with more people–in the form of Twitter profiles (54% more, according to Seevibes)–involved in the discussion.content. Last week, the audience discussed on Facebook the debate Drew vs Claire, generating many interactions.

Meanwhile, it was Degrassi‘s spring finale. No new episodes for the brand will appear until June. It remains to be seen what–if any–online executions are undertaken in the off period.

Methodology:

• Interaction is the number of all Facebook and Twitter activity (including retweets) about a show in English Canada during the 24 hours surrounding a program’s initial air date (since that is when most social media activity occurs).

• Seevibes Score is a number, on a composite index scale of 1 to 100, which provides an overview of the relative value of the social audience of a TV show. It is calculated taking into consideration six variables: total impressions, market share, frequency, feedback level, action level and loyalty score.